I moved to the United States when I was 17, and I was certainly not ready for the chaotic world of competitive high school juniors filled with tests, AP classes, college visits and applications. Despite the language barrier (and my general naivete), I was able to do pretty well. My guide and best friend throughout the ordeal was a black student who is one of the most intelligent people I know (he got his undergraduate degree from MIT and is currently at HBS, but the degrees alone can't explain his wit and intelligence). My own ideas about AA were formed in part through the various discussions I had with him, who was adamantly against it.

My friend refused to reveal his race on his college applications. His relatives would jokingly say "you are a [black man] who thinks he's too good for other [black people]," except they were using the n-word, in my presence! (I couldn't hold it against them because according to one of his uncles, not using "polite talk" in my presence was a demonstration of closeness and acceptance) This kind of attitude, my friend argued, was the root of all AA-related problems. He has said on more than one occasion, "I'm not too good for my own kind, but I am DEFINITELY too good for this racist system that tells black, Hispanic and native American children everywhere, 'we've lowered the standards for you because we don't expect any better from you.'"

My position on this issue has changed significantly since then. There is no question that the intended beneficiaries of AA are still systematically disadvantaged. I am not arguing that these disadvantages are born of some evil, racist policies. It's just statistics. A black or Hispanic child, statistically speaking, is less likely to have access to the kind of education, peer interaction and family upbringing which set people up for the best jobs, government positions, academic posts, etc. Can we trace this phenomenon back to slavery? Racism of the past? Maybe. I don't know and I DON'T CARE where the blame lies. We can justify the need for bridging the socio-economic gap without citing historical or moral responsibility. Such gaps (which can easily be construed as having racial implications) have caused so much tension, hate and needless restriction on our ability to exchange ideas freely. Real incidents of racism are often ignored. Innocuous mistakes or the results of free market competition are blamed on racism. Scholars are NOT free to explore the unpopular edges of the race (and gender) question. Some people try to use the current state of chaos to their advantage, and to the detriment of our societal well-being. Surely we can benefit greatly from rooting out the underlying cause of all this.

And I happen to believe that AA is not the right way to do this. Instead of attacking the root of the problem, AA encourages our educational institutions to pass off that responsibility to someone else. BigLaw is a great example of this. Instead of trying to narrow the 200 point gap in SAT scores between whites/Asians and blacks/Hispanics, high schools try their best to send off as many kids to college, whether they are ready or not. They say, "surely, these underachieving students' study habits, writing skills and test-taking know-how will improve once we send them off to good colleges!" In turn, colleges - which so eagerly accepts under-qualified members of URM - fail to provide enough support and encouragement. Even those minority students who are truly qualified (such as my friend) sometimes fall into the trap of underachievement. An intelligent black student, who could have gotten 170+/3.8 with adequate guidance and an appropriate amount of societal pressure and expectation, ends up with a 3.5 and a 165 because everyone tells him that he will have a good shot at the nation's top law schools if he gets over 3.5 and 165. I am not suggesting that the number difference makes him any less intelligent than he is. He is, however, systematically shielded from "peer competition" which is a crucial part of the legal education. This intelligent student goes off to a top law school where a similar tragedy unfolds. He gets hired by a diversity-starved top firm where, all of the sudden, the playing field is even - or worse yet, hostile to him. Not only is the "shield" gone, many people, as a result of the widespread usage of AA, have negative preconceived notions about his general qualifications. This is entirely unfair to people like my friend whose unbridled success is attributable only to his talent, work ethic and refusal to give into AA's not-so-subtle message.

Our educational system isn't failing because it canít send poor minority students to its prestigious institutions. Nay, it's failing because we systematically refuse to provide the kind of support and motivation that the underachieving students (from every race and economic background) so sorely need. And I contend that AA is partly to blame. Instead of encouraging an underachieving student to do his best, we give him a training wheel, make him depend on it, and then take it away without warning. How is this suppose to help him?

I find it hard to believe that as I sit and wait (endlessly) for my replies from law schools that this is the board on which I am spending so much time. I often find that people who oppose AA do so from anecdotal arguments "I know a smart black student and he's against AA." Nemorino makes a plausible indictment of the educational system, but then goes awry when stating

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Our educational system isn't failing because it canít send poor minority students to its prestigious institutions. Nay, it's failing because we systematically refuse to provide the kind of support and motivation that the underachieving students (from every race and economic background) so sorely need. And I contend that AA is partly to blame. Instead of encouraging an underachieving student to do his best, we give him a training wheel, make him depend on it, and then take it away without warning. How is this suppose to help him?

I live and raise my children in town which is known for its excellent public school system. This was by choice. I, fortunately, can afford the 20K per year in property tax which funds the school system. While it is true that my ability to live and send my children to school here is function of socio-economic rather than racial factors it cannot be argued that statistically, particularly in urban areas poverty affects minorities in greater relative percentages than whites (see http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/vanneman/socy441/trends/racepov.html).

The question that we as society should be trying to understand and answer is "why?". There is no simple single answer, but in my opinion AA is trying to address the idea that to break the cycle of poverty it is necessary to increase the educational level of those who traditionally did not have the advantages (both economic and social) of living in the "majority."

It is absolutely true that admitting a high-school student who is ill prepared with basic foundation (a 1000 SAT score to Princeton) to rigorous college is doing that student a disservice. In truth that is not what AA is doing and I think even the most bigoted among us would have to agree. It is not Yale accepting 140/2.0. It is perhaps Yale accepting a 168/3.3 UM rather than a 171/3.65 white student. The underlying, perhaps even unstated, assumption is that that UM if given the same opportunities the white student had had would have indeed been ahead of where he is now. We all can point to anecdotal examples of "friends" of color who had the same education and financial circumstance as we, and therefore conclude that AA has given them an unfair advantage but again I cannot help but reflect that for literally hundreds of years we in the majority have had that unfair advantage.

AA is not a solution aimed at individuals and if seen as such will always be interpreted as flawed and unfair to other individuals. It is, I believe, a less than perfect but necessary attempt to shift the traditional and stilted racial balance in the other direction with the ultimate goal of becoming obsolete when the "playing field" is level. Until we reach that point however I think it is still an useful and morally necessary tool.